The Very Last Minute
by gpoy
Summary: Finished James has a lot of things on his mind, apart from his problem with the Head Girl, there's a graduation ceremony and he's left thing's a bit late! LJ and stuffed with fluff!
1. The Human Liability

James Potter has a lot of things on his mind. Yes, our beloved Head Boy has a significant problem with the Head Girl. And what with and a graduation ceremony looming, James manages to leave things a little to late. L/J  
  
Hi Everyone, I am being very bad and writing other things when I know you are all so hopelessly hooked on The Story Of James Potter, (not). Anyway, yet another of my pointless petit prose. Stuffed with fluff and fit to burst, tread carefully.  
~fae  
The Very Last Minute  
  
One ~ The Human Liability  
  
James Potter was standing Professor Dumbledore's office, trying very hard not to look at the person beside him for fear of falling over while standing quite still; the old man was sitting on the other side of his desk, trying not burst out laughing, and the person beside James Potter was trying to work out what in the world was so funny.  
  
"Now," Dumbledore addressed James, opening a drawer and rummaging around a little. "You know that one of your duties as Head Boy is to recite the Morals of Magic at next month's graduation ceremony?" He handed the Head Boy a sheet of parchment with a lot of complicated curly writing on it. James nodded and took the parchment nervously, hoping that he wouldn't leave fingerprints of sweat of the clean sheet. "It's only about thirty lines," the headmaster said, "Take a little every day and you should whiz through it, you could even get through it before your OWLs begin next week, happy?"  
  
"Yes sir," James replied, feeling his face slowly heighten in temperature.  
  
"Good, good," Dumbledore said in a final sort of way, turning his burst of giggles into a brief coughing fit. "Well, Mr Potter, Miss Evans, until next time."  
  
The head students made their way to the door. James stood back in the doorway he'd just open to let the Head Girl pass through, and grinned himself silly behind her back when she smiled at him. Little did he know, the old man had ducked behind his desk because he had had the extraordinary urge to grin as well.  
  
Miss Evans waited for James at the top of the stairs, which he supposed was only polite.  
  
Ah, Miss Evans, he thought dreamily. His eyes wondered over her profile; high, freckled cheekbones under dark eyelashes and slightly pointed ears poking through her dark red spirals, making her look faintly elf-like. She was he prettiest girl in the school, the wittiest, the most curious, the most sparkling, the most unique, the scattiest, the flightiest. James was almost certain that if she thought she could, she'd grow wings and flutter away. That was why he avoided direct contact with her most of the time, to save himself the heartbreak of seeing her go.  
  
But what James didn't know was that it was too late, he was already so deep into his affection for her, he would probably grow his own wings and follow her to wherever she chose to go.  
  
Apart from that, there was another, more embarrassing problem as to why he evaded her. James Potter was convinced that Miss Evans thought him. . .well, a bit of a pillock really. The fact that he was extremely tall and skinny didn't help; in fact whenever he was talking to Dumbledore, he would find himself conversing with the man's hat instead of his face. He had a requirement for large, round glasses, or else he'd be practically blind and James had hoped that seven years of walking around under an invisibility cloak would flatten his hair somewhat, but it hadn't worked. In fact, he was almost sure that his night black spikes were poking through the material and people would think that a sooty hedgehog was floating around the corridors. Nobody would be able to touch it without bumping into him though.  
  
Except that he usually did the bumping into people when he was within a ten- metre radius of Miss Evans. This was the problem. Whenever he knew there was any chance of being in her line of vision, he automatically became so clumsy and butter-fingered that Hogwarts should have put him on their list of things that they did not accept liability for. It was especially bad when they were alone. He'd trip up on flagstones, drop his books, stutter like a rusty farm tractor, and then there was that awful episode with the statue of Ferp the Fermented and their sample of Potions coursework; that caused James to want to spontaneously combust every time he thought about it.  
  
"Prepared for your exams?" Miss Evans asked brightly, causing James to smack into a door that displayed "Pull" in ten different languages on the handle.  
  
"Um, er, n-not really," James stuttered, trying to repair his glasses as inconspicuously as possible. He didn't seem to be doing it right though. Let it just be said that Charms was not a speciality of James's. Transfiguration was a different story, he just needed something to begin with and he was unstoppable. Doing something from scratch was harder. It may have also been the fact that he was always partnered with the best Charmer (in more ways than one) in the year. Flitwick's theory was that with her guidance, he'd progress a bit, but the truth was, he hadn't progressed. . .at all.  
  
"Is your wand OK?" she asked, squinting at the pink, frilly flowers that were spurting out of the end of James's wand onto the shattered fragments of his glasses. Her fuzzy outline brushed petals from his handful of glass and brought out her own wand. James felt her gather the shards from his open palms and sensed a shiver go down his spine. He heard her soft voice say "Repairo" and could just make out her shape reaching up to place his newly mended spectacles back onto his nose. The Head Boy involuntarily swallowed as she cocked her head to the side and smiled slightly at him. Her green eyes were mesmerising circles, disrupted only by the dark vortexes in the centres and the white bubbles of the candlelight reflections.  
  
Dazed by this enchanting vision, James made it down three flights of stairs in less than ten seconds. It should have been a record, it really should have, it was just that the Wizarding Book of World Records refused to acknowledge him because he had a certain amount of unfair gravity on his side.  
  
***  
  
OK, here's the deal: I've decided to do a small experiment because I am a greedy sodess and I like my reviews. Er. . . 10 and I'll post the next chappy.  
  
Thanks for reading,  
  
~fae 


	2. Multiple Concussions

James Potter has a lot of things on his mind. Yes, our beloved Head Boy has a significant problem with the Head Girl. And what with and a graduation ceremony looming, James manages to leave things a little to late. L/J  
  
Hi Everyone, I am being very bad and writing other things when I know you are all so hopelessly hooked on The Story Of James Potter, (not). Anyway, yet another of my pointless petit prose. Stuffed with fluff and fit to burst, tread carefully. ~fae  
  
Two ~ Multiple Concussions  
  
James woke up to the blurry startling white of the Hospital Wing and was briefly met with utmost confusion. What had he done to land himself in the place this time, he thought as he groped around for his glasses. He went through his options:  
  
Prank backfiring horribly wrong? No, that wasn't it.  
  
Getting into a duel with Snape? No, that wasn't it either.  
  
Quidditch? No, he was too fast on a broom to be injured.  
  
James cringed as he came to his last option: Lily Evans.  
  
Suddenly he remembered everything; walking into that door and breaking his glasses, the Head Girl fixing them, him falling down the stairs. . .this had to be the worst thing that had happened to him yet.  
  
He placed his glasses on his nose and managed to jump a foot in the air whilst lying down. The object of his affections was sitting there next to his bed, smiling that adorable smile and looking absolutely gorgeous as she always did to him.  
  
James would have then given anything to be swallowed up by his disinfectant- smelling mattress.  
  
"Hi," she greeted him softly, "How are you feeling?"  
  
James would have said something like "Appallingly Humiliated", but he didn't think he'd be able to get those long words out of his mouth in a relatively short time. He was spared from answering however, by the arrival of Sirius Black, Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew.  
  
"Greetings everyone!" Sirius announced, intent on always making a big entrance.  
  
"How are you, Prongs?" Remus asked, a tad of amusement in his voice.  
  
"Ooh! Company!" Sirius exclaimed, giving Lily a little bow of the head, which she returned with a smile. "And FOOD!" he added excitedly, spotting James's pile of confectionery on his bedside table. He looked at James and winked. "You seem pretty sussed here, Prongs. Want us to come and get you at the end of term?"  
  
"He'd miss his OWLs," Remus pointed out.  
  
"Pff," Sirius made a noise and flopped his hand.  
  
"H-how long have I b-been in here?" James asked quietly.  
  
"Six days," Peter said proudly.  
  
"S-Six days?!" exclaimed James sitting up rather fast. "That means. . ."  
  
"The your first exam is tomorrow? Yes, it does," admitted Remus.  
  
"Bloody Hell!" James jumped out of bed and turned red when he realised that he had, once again, said the wrong thing in the presence of Miss Evans. She however, only located his clothes, handed them to him and pulled a set of curtains around his bed, making him go, if possible, even redder. He got dressed and Sirius pulled curtains back, telling him he was just in time for the first lesson of the day.  
  
"Why didn't someone enervate me?" he asked.  
  
"We didn't think we should risk it, you fell down eighty steps and you could have had a concussion," Lily said, a trace of worry in her voice. "I don' think you were even breathing when I got you to Madam Pomfrey."  
  
This information in mind, James almost concussed himself again, purely because he was in a hurry to got his socks on in the presence of Lily Evans.  
  
***  
  
OWLs came and went. James scraped past mostly because he had come across things when researching for one of his infamous practical jokes. After the last Exam, the seventh years were immensely relieved that the exams were over, but a little melancholy to realise that they only had two days of school left, one of them devoted to lessons and the other to the Graduation Ceremony.  
  
The Graduation Ceremony! James had remembered on the morning on their last day of lessons. He had a speech to memorise! In a wash of blind panic, he threw all of his belongings out of his trunk to retrieve the parchment from where he'd tossed the night he'd come out of the Hospital Wing. There it was, all long, thrity lines of it, half in English, half in Elfish. Elfish! James asked you, Elfish!  
  
Sirius stumbled over, having just gotten dressed and peered over his best friend's shoulder.  
  
"Whoops, those the Morals of Magic?" James nodded wordlessly. "Friend of my brother's had to learn them, took him about six months."  
  
"Thanks, Sirius," James said sardonically.  
  
***  
  
She was clearly bored. Well, wasn't everyone in History of Magic? James Potter breathed a chuckle as she idly flicked blots of ink at her palm and blew upwards so that a stray lock of hair floated up and landed on her curly garnet head.  
  
He sat two rows behind her and one row to the left. If they were on a chessboard, if he was a knight and she was a queen, he could take her on his next move.  
  
"Prongs. . .Prongs. . .Prongs!"  
  
Sirius Black had to nudge James quite hard in the ribs to get his best friend's attention.  
  
"What?" whispered James, annoyed.  
  
"Stop staring at Evans, man, or she's gonna know you like her!" Sirius hissed, a definite evil star in his eye.  
  
"She's more likely to find out that I like her by you telling her, Padfoot," James retorted.  
  
"Ha! You admit it!" his friend whispered triumphantly. "Seven years and you finally admitted it!"  
  
"N-" James got halfway through his first syllable before he realised what he'd said. "Dammit. So now I suppose you're going to tell her?" he said gloomily.  
  
"I might, depends," Sirius said, inspecting his fingernails. James frowned.  
  
"On what?"  
  
"On whether you tell her first, m'friend," Sirius grinned. "Say, by the end of today?" James opened his mouth to argue, you didn't just tell the girl you'd liked for seven years that you liked her on the spur of the moment like that!  
  
"Is there a problem with the four hundred and fifty B.C. discovery of wand cores, Mr Potter?" Professor Binns asked, stopping his drone mid-sentence.  
  
"Huh? Oh, no sir," James said in a bit of a wobbly sentence. "It's. . .fine, brilliant, in fact. . .yeah."  
  
Professor Binns sunk back down into his flat lecture as James frowned at Sirius, who was red in the face from trying not to laugh. James shook his head lightly and his gaze was yet again drawn to her. He found her looking at him; James got the shock of his life when she pushed forward a small smile, he fell off his chair. Once he had apologised to Professor Binns for the second time, he tried to get down to some serious learning of the Morals, but Sirius leaned over and hissed in his ear:  
  
"Well, I have sorted out a few of your problems," he grinned. James did the exact opposite.  
  
"What in Merlin's name have you done now?" he asked in a low, dangerous voice. Sirius pretended to look a little hurt, but it wasn't really working when his eyes were shining with excitement and mirth. At that moment, something hit the side of James's head, he looked down and frowned at the parchment aeroplane on the desk in front of him. Glancing over at Sirius, his best friend was on the verge of giggles and nodding towards the plane suggestively. James rolled his eyes and unfolded the parchment. He discovered that the plane was in fact made of two sheets of parchemnt, one inside the other and was surprised whem he saw Sirius's writing on the first.  
  
Dear Miss Evans,  
  
Please sit down, you may be shocked and offended to find that our dear Head Boy has neglected to learn his assigned Morals of Magic for tomorrow's graduation ceremony. In fact, he has not even read them through once yet, because he has had other, more attractive distractions on his mind. Therefore, on behalf of a very dear friend, I, Sirius Black, whom you know and love so well, have taken it on myself to request your aid.  
  
Please assist Mr Potter in commiting the Morals of Magic to memory tonight in the library, where he will be at eight o'clock sharp.  
  
Many thanks and wishes of good luck,  
  
Sirius  
  
James breathed out very slowly as switched the sheets with trembling fingers. His fears were confirmed as Miss Evans's loose, curly handwriting met his eyes from the second page.  
  
Dear Messers Black and Potter,  
  
While deliriously terrorised at the mere notion of the Head Boy leaving his duty neclected in the said manner, I am, once again, called upon to perform my duty as Head Girl and to help any student in need. Therefore I will be in the library at eight o'clock tonight to assist Mr Potter in his commiting his speech to memory, but for the sole reason of being the generous, kindhearted creature that I am and seeing a chance to milk this event for all it is worth at a later date.  
  
Regards,  
  
Miss Evans.  
  
Oh dear magic, thought James as he glared at Sirius who was reading Miss Evans's reply over his shoulder. Screwing up all his Gryffindor courage, he chanced a look at the pretty redhead to his right. She glanced up and tossed him a smile. Sirius grinned back while James tugged at the sides of his mouth. Once Miss Evans had looked down once more, he moved his arm to try and starngle Sirius but couldn't because he knocked over his ink bottle.  
  
***  
  
OK, I kept my promise! What shall i make it this time? How about we get up to 29? That's only 15 more.  
  
~fae x 


	3. Swallowing Curses

James Potter has a lot of things on his mind. Yes, our beloved Head Boy has a significant problem with the Head Girl. And what with and a graduation ceremony looming, James manages to leave things a little to late. L/J  
  
Hi Everyone, I am being very bad and writing other things when I know you are all so hopelessly hooked on The Story Of James Potter, (not). Anyway, yet another of my pointless petit prose. Stuffed with fluff and fit to burst, tread carefully. ~fae  
  
Three ~ Swallowing Curses  
  
James nervously paced up and down the library, chewing on a sherbet wand to stop himself having to go to Madam Pomfrey and have corrective surgical charms on his lip. Also for the fact that he hadn't had anything to eat at dinner, he'd been too nervous to eat, but now the thought occurred to him that sugar may not have been the best choice of nourishment. Anxiously, he looked at his watch and registered the fact that it was two minute past eight. Panicked thoughts sparked in his mind. What if she wasn't coming for some reason? James didn't know if this would be a blessing or a curse. Maybe it was all a joke from Sirius; James suddenly stopped pacing and took the wand out of his mouth, glancing around him for any floating cameras.  
  
He picked up his chew toy again and resumed crunching until he heard a voice behind him.  
  
"Hungry?"  
  
James's heart frazzled to a crisp as he turned around and walked right into the ambush of her astounding eyes. For a very long moment, he just stood still and stared at her, then, when her eyes flicked down to the object in his hands, he looked down and realised that he hadn't been chewing on a sugar wand as he had thought, but his own, real wand! Teeth marks had appeared all around the top and a small crack was sparking at odd intervals.  
  
James mentally hit himself with a sledgehammer.  
  
"Um, you might wanna. . ." Lily started, and bit her lip. Thinking otherwise, her took out her wand and twirled in so the end grew wider and shined over into a handheld mirror. She obstructed James's view of herself with it and he was met with the incredibly more horrifying sight of his own face with various warts, blemishes and colourful ink stains around his chins and cheeks. James closed his eyes in horror and fumbled with his masticated wand while trying to laugh at himself for her benefit. Not just when she's around now, he thought in dismay, even when she's not! He raised his wand to his face and muttered the opposite of the charms he had apparently swallowed and got a nasty shock from his malfunctioning wand.  
  
"Ow," he hissed, dropping the offending object and putting a hand to the bottom of his face.  
  
"Oh my gosh! Are you OK?" she asked worriedly, shaking her wand so the mirror sunk back into a smooth point. "Do you want me to take a look? Here. . ."  
  
"Er, n-no, I'm OK, th-thanks," he stuttered nervously, afraid that if she got any closer, he'd somehow make a bookcase come down on her head or something.  
  
"Sure?" she asked, in a way that told him she was wondering if he wasn't a little mad.  
  
"Y-yeah, yeah," he said, hoping he hadn't dome himself any permanent damage. "Er, anyway, th-this thing I have to get learned. . .?" he started.  
  
"Oh yeah, you read it yet?" she asked, walking over to a polished wooden table and setting down her books.  
  
"Yeah. . .um. . .once," he admitted shyly. She smiled and James stubbed his toe on the leg of his chair trying to sit down. Biting back a number of phrases that were by no means fitting in the presence of a lady, James sat without audible complaint and dug around in his bag for the tattered piece or parchment. He felt almost ashamed as he handed it over and wished that he hadn't had it out at breakfast next to his sausages and ketchup.  
  
Miss Evans scanned it and handed it back to him when she'd finished.  
  
"Well, it shouldn't take us that long, you just have to read the lines and keep going over them in you mind." James nodded despite the slight itch that had developed under his chin. "OK, first two lines?" she asked. James took a deep breath.  
  
"T-take your wand in h-hand and say,  
  
'From truth and v-v-virtue I'll not s-stray'." She smiled, regardless of the fact that it was obviously terrible. James went decidedly red and cleared his throat. Ignoring the mild burning he was felling on his cheek  
  
"Do you know how to say the next bit?" she asked. He shook his head and scratched his chin.  
  
"I think it goes: Mervah leah vir na,  
  
Tiris pher horoh ta." James stared at her lips as the smooth dialect slipped over them and tripped up worse than ever when he repeated it. This was the way they continued through the thirty lines, each of James's recitals getting steadily worse until he was mumbling worse than a child telling his mother why he'd been suspended.  
  
"That's the end," she said finally, "You did well." James hacked away at his lip before saying:  
  
"Well?" exclaimed James. "I was crap!" he laughed. She smiled shyly.  
  
"I expect all you need is practise, it'll come easier if you know it. OK, do you know the first verse?" James closed his eyes and concentrated hard on not sounding like an idiot. Unfortunately this meant he wasn't thinking about what he was saying and instead of tripping up on his words, he had to be interrupted by Miss Evans when she corrected him with the right ones. Time and time again they went through it, Miss Evans sometimes testing him to see if he could say the stanzas in the opposite order or if he could say it with her shooting fireworks at the library ceiling. Her theory was, if he could do it with explosions, anything would happen on the day and he'd still be able to carry on despite distractions. Little did she know that, in his mind, she was the biggest distraction there was.  
  
By this time, the room was empty. When Madam Pince had strode over, demanding that they go to bed, James had handed her the note Sirius had gotten Remus to forge and was pleasantly surprised when she discovered no criminal aspect to it. She then informed them that she was retiring to bed and told them sternly not to stay up too late or get into trouble. James suspected she was only trusting them because they were head students and anyway, what could they do the night before the last day of term? Nevertheless he still struggled to stop his face frying at her words; "getting into trouble".  
  
"OK, again?" she asked. James was tired and by the coloured circles around her eyes, Miss Evans was too. His hair was scruffier than usual, if that was possible and the knot of his Gryffindor tie was somewhere near the bottom of his chest, but James concentrated hard and got intent on saying his piece just so Miss Evans could go to bed. He made it through without stumbling once. When he came back to the real world, it was only then that he realised just how much his face was hurting. Then he remembered about the charms! He must have looked a right prat leaving them on his face for so long, not to mention that his eyes were now watering from the various stinging, itching and burning sensations he was experiencing.  
  
"Are you alright?" she asked, concerned.  
  
"Yeah," he said. "It's just my face, I-I don't know w-what I could have done to it."  
  
"You know it looks pretty serious," she said, her forehead crinkling in worry, "I wish you'd let me take a look at it, or it might get much worse my tomorrow."  
  
"Alright," James said nervously. She stood up and came around the table, holding her wand and James stood up so she could see better. She put her fingers under his chin and moved it so his face was in the light of the candles. James tried to keep his hands from trembling on contact and struggled to keep his palms at room temperature.  
  
Miss Evans reached up with her wand and muttered a series of charms. One by one, each of the unpleasant sensations James was experiencing vanished and he became increasingly aware that, although her was a good five inches taller than her, they were so close he could feel her soft breath on his neck.  
  
"There you go, that's all I could see. . ." she started to say, but James had gotten a notion into his head, or it could be classified as a swift kick up the arse from instinct, whatever it was, it was the only thing that could explain the reason he bent lower and enveloped her lips in his.  
  
In those few seconds, he fully appreciated what he was telling himself he could never have. Apart from a brain void of thoughts because of the initial shock of his actions, he was taking in her smell, her pressure, her presence, simply her kiss, and it was all wonderful.  
  
Then he had to pull back and face the music. Well he didn't exactly because he looked at the floor but anyway. . .  
  
"I'm so sorry," he whispered softly to his shoes.  
  
The silence was almost toxic as her fingers brushed her lips and she swallowed, eyes wide and not tired-looking at all now. After what seemed like literally Hippogriff-years, she uttered something so quiet James strained to hear it.  
  
"James. . .why?"  
  
He had to look at her then, it would be a bit rude not to. James flicked his eyes up guiltily and discovered it was a big mistake. He'd looked into the eyes that imprisoned you and threw away the key, he looked into the eyes that sent you over the moon and they were also the eyes that didn't tolerate being lied to.  
  
"Because," he said slowly. No, it wasn't working there was no way he could lie now. "The. . .the reason I avoid you sometimes, the reason I have difficulty saying anything remotely comprehendible, the reason I land myself in hospital whenever I come into contact with you, the reason I do stupid, groundless, unreasonable, irrational acts of harassment," he raised his eyes heavenward for a moment, asking for one last miracle from the powers the be to stop him from uttering the last words that were queued up in his head, "Is because I am undeniably, downright, head-over-heals in love with you."  
  
Miss Evans hadn't moved a millimetre during this explanation, only to look at the floor when he pleaded her for an answer with his eyes. James's heart drilled through the floor and reared its head in Australia. At last, she said something.  
  
"In that case," she whispered, "Why are you sorry?"  
  
She smiled coyly and James barely had time to smile in surprised when she reached up pulled him gently down again by the red and gold stripes of his Gryffindor tie.  
  
***  
  
The next day, on the stand in front of the whole year, when James stumbled and hesitated terribly over the morals of magic, nobody would know that it wasn't because he hadn't learnt it; he had, Miss Evans had helped him get there in the end. It was only because of the sweet looks and secret smiles that she was sending him from the back of the crowd where she was trying to prompt him, and the knowledge that, for only time in his life, he, James Potter was extremely glad that he'd left learning his lines until the very last minute.  
  
***  
  
Review! Please? I can't blackmail you because that was the last chapter so you'll just have to do it out of the goodness of your heart.  
  
It's been fun,  
  
~fae 


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